REPORT: Q2 Exit in Italian GP Quali

Atlassian Williams Racing will begin the Italian GP from the seventh row of the grid for the 2025 Italian Grand Prix after another tight Qualifying session.

Carlos Sainz will begin from P13, with Alex Albon alongside in P14 after the two FW47s were only a tenth away from reaching the top-10 shootout.

It was a 1:19.5 for both drivers as Carlos' best Q2 time hit a 1:19.528, 0.095s away from P10, while Alex was just behind on a 1:19.583.

After an impressive Friday that saw us in the upper positions, Saturday's two sessions were not as fruitful straight from FP3.

Both cars had no issues in running, but Alex ended the final 60 minutes of Free Practice in P10 and Carlos in P13 in an early indicator of how close the field was.

That continued into Q1 as Quali began under clear skies and a warm 27°C air temperature.

Carlos was the first to set a lap, but it was immediately taken away after he ran wide at Turn 7 and left gravel on the track.

Times soon hit the board, though, with the teammates helping each other with a slipstream as they started and ended laps, timing their passes into the Parabolica and on the pit straight well.

Alex's 1:20.072 left him on the brink in P14, while Carlos jumped to P3 by setting a 1:19.644.

No improvement for the No55 still had him ending Q1 in P5, but Alex pulled out a lap when it counted to record a 1:19.837 to reach Q2 in P15 – just 0.080s away from the drop zone, but 0.423s from P1.

A wide moment for Alex at Ascari started Q2 the wrong way, and he set a 1:20.240 to be almost exactly a second off Carlos' pace as the two Williams cars enjoyed an empty track in the opening moments.

Traffic soon built up in the pit lane, however, and our pair sat P9 and P13 ahead of the final runs after improving to 1:19.542 (Carlos) and 1:20.107 (Alex).

Although advancements were made on the final runs, they would not be enough for Q3 and our Italian GP Qualifying ended early.

Speaking after the session's conclusion, Carlos shared his thoughts, saying, "We expected today to be a lot more challenging.

"We’ve been struggling all season with our single lap pace on the Soft compound, being very tricky to get them into the optimum window and feeling like every push lap is different from each other.

"However, I have faith on our race pace, and I will give absolutely everything out there to get into the points. Let’s race!"

"It's a frustrating result," begins Alex, continuing to say, "It's the same issue of getting the tyres to work.

"We tried absolutely everything this weekend, so we need to go back to the drawing board.

"We have a good car here, which you see in Free Practice when we can do some more things with outlaps and cool laps, but our issues come in Qualifying when it matters.

"Carlos showed in Q1 a glimpse of our true pace and where I think we belong. It will be a one-stop here, so we’ll need clean air and to be careful with degradation.

"As easy as this track looks to overtake, it's actually quite difficult and the DRS train is usually an issue here.

"We're not where we want to be but tomorrow, we will work together and see what we can do."

James Vowles, Atlassian Williams Racing's Team Principal, looked on the bright side and said, "It is great to see the sport so healthy, with less than four tenths separating 15 cars in Q2.

"We had shown in Q1 that we can get the tyres to work but it’s not the same as everyone else, and I think today we didn’t quite get the programme right.

"Even then I think we had the pace to just about get into Q3, but not much more, which is different to how we have been over the rest of the weekend.

"We now go into the race swinging; we don’t have much to lose, and we have a fast car from Friday, so let’s use that to the best of our ability and get some points to our name."